With a newly elected Board of Directors, today's Tomkins Institute is rededicated to the study of motivation, emotion, and cognition, as well as applications of those studies for individuals, couples, families, communities, and nations.
We believe that insights from affect script psychology will benefit those seeking greater understanding of human behavior in areas such as business settings, criminal justice systems, educational systems, psychotherapeutic systems, and the neurosciences, amongst others. To that end, we have developed programs that make this information available to clinicians, community leaders, educators, clergy and parents.
Living from the Inside, Out.
In formulating its mission, The Tomkins Institute: Applied Studies in Motivation, Emotion, and Cognition makes these assumptions:
1. HUMANS MAKE MEANING IN WAYS THAT NO OTHER CREATURE ON EARTH DOES.
2. EMOTIONS ARE THE MOTIVATING ELEMENT IN THE WAYS HUMAN BEINGS MAKE MEANING AND EVALUATE. THUS, EMOTIONS ARE NECESSARY IN CREATING A VALUE BASE FROM WHICH WE CARRY OUT OUR PURPOSES.
3. OUR CULTURE, AS WELL AS OTHERS, IS INADEQUATELY EDUCATED ABOUT EMOTIONS -- WHERE THEY COME FROM, THE PART THEY PLAY IN THE WAY WE FEEL-THINK-ACT, AS WELL AS IN UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCES IN THE WAY POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE AFFECT BIAS HUMAN BEHAVIOR AS WELL AS OUR IDEOLOGIES.
4.
HOW WE LIMIT EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION HAS A PROFOUND EFFECT ON THE HEALTH OF OUR
CHILDREN, AND ULTIMATELY THE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE.
5.
TO RESTORE ORGANIC COORDINATION IN THE HUMAN ORGANISM, AFFECT NEEDS FREEDOM,
COGNITION NEEDS LIMITS.
Inspired by the work of
Silvan S. Tomkins:
Our
value and goal is: To provide resources for those who seek to
understand the biological system of
innate human affect displayed on the face from infancy through
adulthood, and its role in the motivating of feeling-thinking-acting.
Our
purpose is: to continuously learn and to ever better
represent how these biological processes transform
into cognitively programmed patterns of perception and action that shape us
and the worlds in which we live.
Our
action is: to further extend and expand upon Tomkins's constructs
with applications that benefit human development from individuals, to
communities, to cultures, to nations.